A number of financial transactions, such as payment of bills, on-line banking and trading in capital markets have been enhanced by, and may have been enabled over, computer networks. These networks generally have increased the speed of these transactions. The volumes exchanged in capital markets have experienced a significant rise over the past few years, based at least in part on such computer networks.
Known methods of financial trading over computer networks generally involve sending out requests for quotes, receiving responses to these requests, going through a few deal iterations and then entering into deals. Such methods may be cumbersome and time consuming, which may reduce the speed of transactions. The speed of transactions and data analysis generally are important in the capital markets, which are very dynamic. One's ability to react to changing market scenarios is an important factor related to profitable trading. Thus, it may be advantageous for one to be provided with as much relevant and timely information to make decisions in the dynamic capital markets.
A user involved in a particular transaction needs information about the market to enable the user to enter a deal effectively. Among the different trading information needed, the bids and offers made by providers in the market may be quite important. A provider may provide a bid/offer pair as a quote. A bid generally is a rate offered by a provider at which the provider wishes to buy a financial instrument. Generally, an offer is a rate at which a provider wishes to sell a financial instrument. Important information for a user may be the best bid, e.g., the highest bid, and the best offer, e.g., the lowest offer, made in the market. Another important parameter for a user may be an amount of financial instrument that may be available in the market for buying or selling at a particular bid rate or offer rate.
Known systems may provide users with such information in a consolidated form, and may facilitate such transactions. Examples of such known systems may include EBS Spot, Reuters 3000 Matching, Advanced Currency Market (ACM) interface and the Forex.com interface. Several of the features provided by these products are described below.
A provider generally may provide a bid/offer pair as a quote. Among the received quotes, the best quote may be displayed to the user. The best quote may be decided by such systems based on a difference between the bid and offer rates within the quote. When a user is interested in buying, however, it may not be interested in the bid rate within a quote. Thus, the interface may provide the separation of the bid rate from the offer rate. An individual bid rate or offer rate generally is called a price. The best prices may be displayed from among the bids and offers in the market. In addition, the information about previous transactions may be displayed. This may provide a short history of the market and the transactions made by the user. Further, the volume of currency available for a particular bid/offer pair also may be displayed.
PCT publication WO02052369A2, titled, “System and Method for a Universal Trading Platform,” assigned to Financial Markets Solutions, Inc. describes an online foreign exchange transaction manager, which separates best bid rates from best offer rates, and displays them to a user over a customized user interface. This publication, as well as the above-mentioned systems/interfaces, however, suffer from one or more limitations.
For example, the quotes displayed to a user may be quotes received from the providers with which the users may have a mutual credit agreement. In addition, if a user and a provider have given each other a credit line, each of them may only see the quotes applicable for the lesser of the two credits provided. Since the amount available from each provider may not be displayed, the depth of the market may be hidden from the users.
In another example of limitations of the known systems, the best bids and offers may be displayed to the user. A user, however, may be interested in prices, which may not be the best prices. A user might also be interested in knowing the total amount available in the market for buying or selling at different bid rates and offer rates, respectively. Additionally, a user may have preferred providers, and may be interested in monitoring the bids and offers made by these preferred providers. The existing systems, do not provide users with a means for choosing a preferred provider.
Although a user may be interested in the best bids and offers available in the market to decide upon a transaction, the user may also desire information about the depth of the market. Such information may enable a user to make an informed decision. Thus, there is a need for systems and methods that provide users with a more detailed listing of the bids and offers relevant to the user that are available in the market. There also is a need to provide details about the total amount available in the market corresponding to each of these bid and offer rates. Further, there is a need to aggregate the prices available in the market.
As speed is an important parameter in making decisions and executing transactions in the capital markets, there further is a need for a systems and methods that will reduce the time required for a user to obtain desired information to make an informed decision.